Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

OPINION

Mailbag for Oct. 26: Where are the superlatives now? TV wrong about Hurricanes

Where are the superlatives now?

America likes to think of itself in superlatives. But 2017 has seen those assumed attributes turn ruinous. Instead of the "greatest and the best," we've had the most destructive hurricanes to Texas, Florida and the Caribbean territories that are part of the U.S.; the biggest mass shooting in the nation's history and the worst California wildfires ever.

Adding insult to injury, we also have the most dangerous president in the nation's history - impulsive, impetuous, bigoted, narcissistic, unschooled in history and diplomacy and eager to make perilous nuclear threats to the equally unstable North Korean regime.

Where will it end?

Doris Brown, Fort Myers

TV wrong on Hurricanes

On Saturday evening, I happened to catch the 11 p.m. news on ABC 7. While broadcasting sports, it did a segment on kneeling for the national anthem, a subject which breaks my heart as my family comes from a military background, to me it is blatant disrespect no matter what race you are.

During the segment, the station showed Miami Hurricanes players kneeling, and the news broadcast portrayed them as being part of the protest. However, I have been going to Canes games for 30-plus years, and several years ago, the team made it an every home game tradition to kneel in the end zone for prayer after running out of the tunnel.

This is complete irresponsible journalism to give the public a false reason of perception. I hope these truths can be made public to help people who may have seen the segment.

Brian Chew, Fort Myers

Electoral process is working

Over the past few months, The News-Press has printed several letters from readers disparaging America's electoral process. This is a cynical campaign by the Democrat faction to delegitimize last year's presidential election because its side lost.

In Michael Golding's recent missive, he decries the "hacking and interference both from within the U.S. and from enemy countries," along with the "anachronism" of the electoral college that denied the Presidency to his favored candidate.

First, there is no evidence even a year into this "investigation" of possible interference or collusion that any votes were added, deleted or altered in an attempt by any party to try to tilt the election result one way or the other. The only election rigging proven thus far appears to be confined to the Democratic Party's primary in favor of Hillary Clinton.

Second, Golding should understand that America is not a pure democracy. We are a republic and for very good reasons. The electoral college was an ingenious invention by our Founding Fathers to ensure that the people of every state in the union have a fair stake in our federal governance and that the whole of the country will not be subject to the tyranny of those few states with larger populations.

To that end, it worked exactly as it was designed to do. Hillary Clinton garnered 96 percent of the votes in Washington, D.C., 89 percent in New York City, and 84 percent in San Francisco. 90 percent of her popular vote in fact came from just seven coastal states.

Finally, while most Americans, those of us in uniform especially, suffered under eight years of Obama's dismantling the military and marginalizing America's leadership position in the world, we didn't resort to subterfuge to discredit his Presidency.

Even the "birther" movement sprang originally from Hillary's dirty tricks czar in April 2008, verified by the fact-checker Snopes. We who respect and revere our Constitution just endured. We rode out the storm and waited to elect a better leader. That, Mr. Golding, is how America works.

Gary Peppers, Cape Coral

Cape's debris cleanup

Jim Hoder writes an interesting Mailbag piece, “Irma and debris cleanup,” Oct. 23. He suggests that instead of hauling all this huge debris, tree service companies should be contracted to use chippers and haul away the all the smaller loads. I don’t have an answer except to report that my experience with the current system is that it is not efficient, if working at all.

The Cape Coral Public Works department has a special colorful map of the Cape on their web site which shows the streets in purple that are “in the area” of having debris removed. For years during the course of each week, I walk a large area in the Southeast Cape near the river either walking thru or past almost all the streets in that area that are in purple. I’ve seen only one “crew but gone the next day.

I spoke to a courteous clerk in the Cape Public Works Department who explained their strategy. If a street cannot be competed with one pass, they move on to another street. But my daily two-hour, six-mile walk in that area revealed no debris removal was taking place except for one instance. They are expecting to be completed by Nov. 15, but what year?